MP Andrey Lugovoy has addressed Russia’s Prosecutor General with
an official request to check if Yandex’s activities fall under
the Federal Law on Mass Media. The parliamentarian notes in his
letter that the search site publishes various news and analytical
reports from Russian and foreign media outlets, and this can be
seen as the distribution of mass information. Therefore, he
writes, the company becomes a major means of mass communication
and must be subject to the same rules as every other mass media
outlet in the country.

The politician told the business daily Kommersant that in his
view there was no difference between a story published in a
newspaper and the same story published on the ‘Yandex top news’
web page. Lugovoy added that even if the Prosecutor General rules
that the search engine cannot be considered a mass media outlet,
he would prepare changes to the law and ensure that all
activities of Yandex remained within the legal framework.

Besides, the Russian MP said that as Yandex’s parent company is
registered in the Netherlands, it cannot be sued by Russian
citizens who find the Yandex News reports abusive or false and
this is an infringement of their rights.

The initiative has received support of Leonid Levin, the deputy
chair of the State Duma Committee for Mass Media.

“Many people receive information from the Yandex Top News
page without even following the links to stories. Why not equate
this page to mass media then?” Levin told the newspaper.

Yandex reported that it was unaware of any claims or legal
actions by Lugovoy.

The issue of relations between news aggregators and mass media
was raised in late April this year during the televised Q&A
session between President Vladimir Putin and Russian journalists
and bloggers organized by the United Popular Front movement.
Putin admitted that “not everything was simple” in this
situation, acknowledging that Yandex was not officially
registered as mass media and still had many million people
visiting its news page every day.

Putin also told reporters that the government and the
presidential administration were aware of the problem and were
discussing which internet sites should be registered as mass
media.

Yandex executives strongly denied their involvement in the mass
media business, maintaining they are related to it in the same
way as the post office delivers conventional newspaper
subscriptions.

“There is no need to get a separate license for headlines on
our web-page as these headlines are already a product of licensed
media outlets,” the Yandex press service said.